Too much dancing

[Sibyll]

I want to play chess

Gear checks aren't playing chess, they're the sign in front of a ferris wheel that says "You must be this tall to ride". I don't really see where the strategy is in wait until 50% then nuke it until it's dead. Honestly what you are describing sounds more like a FATE than anything else.

I'm curious but what were those Wizards doing from 100-20% HP? Were they AFK?

Moving around at least requires personal awareness, knowledge of the bosses rotation, and properly timing skills to avoid having to interrupt a channel to avoid AoEs. Standing still and repeating your Max DPS skill rotation is mind numbing.

[Tarta]

I'm curious but what were those Wizards doing from 100-20% HP? Were they AFK?

Moving around at least requires personal awareness, knowledge of the bosses rotation, and properly timing skills to avoid having to interrupt a channel to avoid AoEs. Standing still and repeating your Max DPS skill rotation is mind numbing.

Technically, wizards did so much instant damage that you could peel aggro off the tank in 2-3 spells. Doesn't mean you did nothing else during the fight. Mana was very hard to re-acquire, meditating took forever and clarity (enchanter buff) was crack as it just barely gave you the illusion of having actual mana regen.

Vox and Nagafen were hard fights at the start of EQ, but you have to take into account that these bosses are there in the open world, where all their dungeon shit spawns and can overwhelm a raid at any time. Placement was key, otherwise, you had teams that would handle add-aggro management in your raid until they were called in to burn a boss down.

This whole "Boss can't be affected by X spell" is new in MMOs and a tad dumbed down to what Magic should be. High resist yeah such, poor sticking of spell over recast sure, high aggro on CC spell attempt sure, but outright immunity? It's not like you're some super god being that lives outside the rules of reality (there I could understand).

Nothing was as fun and risky, as having 1 enchanter mind control some super mob, to tank the boss, and running the risk of having the spell break on each hit. Or a bard, snare kiting shit for hours. I don't know the immersion was better.

Seems that immersion is something games are trying to coin with graphics and such lately, which isn't really doing it on the long run I find. Too little to lose on death, not enough risk and too much reward. It's also to note that society and the median for player base is older now, and the game selecting wider;the time that can be alloted per games is much less than previous. This is why you find high reward on low risk to be selling better, thus flooding the gaming market.

A game producer wants money. Has to cater to the widest fan-base possible to get the most gains, or have some F2P system where they can catch a few "cash whales" that'll sink 70K a year into the game.

[Sibyll]

snip

It's a different time. I admittedly did not play the older MMOs, but my guess would be that things like class strategy, boss mechanics and clever tricks were spread more so by word of mouth than by watching a youtube video of the top guilds doing the encounter. This really removes the fun of struggling through the encounter and learning as a group.

What you are saying about games leaning more towards graphics is something you could say about every genre today. I look at the Elder Scrolls series from Morrowind to Skyrim and I see a series that gets more and more graphically and physically impressive while they continue to flush mechanics, complexity and depth down the toilet, but I digress.

I think one of the major culprits of the high reward for low risk has been the introduction of "token" gear. It's just a bit more satisfying to finally get a drop than to meet the ETA on your next piece of token gear, except of course when the drop you are farming is gating you from progressing content.